Poetry in translation

Michał Sobol is an awarded Polish poet whose poetics is marked by restrain and condensation, at the same time displaying existential tension. Sobol transfigures ordinary experiences into philosophical, political, or historical moments of unease or disquietude.

Ivan Dobnik’s poems are deceptively pastoral. In “Where the Forest Season Ends,” the lush and magical depiction of lighting a fire in the forest as a child becomes a metaphor for the unwitting destruction of the forest as “its shadows fall through the poem” and “the flames persist […] in the trusted wilderness of primeval space.”

Tonight a wind plays attentively
–mindful of that loud clashing of blades—

First an earthy earth,
then another—no, the very same
suddenly unearthly.

O, Gentle Reader,
lend me your noble ear. 
They call me Jean-Pierre.
I live in Vatovavy, a fiefdom
of charm & bliss.

(Elba Songs)

In Chiessi, the fish came from the sea in the morning

after the Costa del Sole sunsets,

where one makes love overhanging the Tyrrhenian Sea,

The silences yearn and the sun falls.
The first, great dark cleaves
the brown humps of a valley
that reposes. A shattered moon hangs

Ionian, from the dark depths emerged the waters
from the hoarse and mighty voice of the underground
was generated the blind furrow of the Mediterranean.
Volcanoes and shadows took shape, and the sea

– Dying is this losing weight in a loop –
all the lemmas we’re fond of
left to decompose in an unfamiliar tongue
of worms and mud, the fragile stem
of body, crossed by a tremor
of fireflies, the gaze folded back on itself.

On certain November afternoonsa shine of water slidesover windows in the room and the aquariumof your life dense with silence likea household wave it rises up unfeignedto lap the walls and the opalescentreflection of the absent ones: they’re lined uplike a small army on the dresser,two-dimensional and smiling from their frontierlimbo, they seem to want

translated from the Slovene by Miriam Drev    from BECKETT – MY ADVOCATE 2 where a blind alley ends where you train silence to be voice what is a bird’s twittering without your word how do you appear without water in yourself you’re made of air and light you say body and here you are

Translated from the Spanish by Lynn Levin For Pablo Bacho What is the land, what is oblivion and what map bestows its gaze upon us: perhaps the stretch marks weep, ask us to what we might give birth without fire or stone. So many birds clutter the soul flighty and abandoned. Tell me, brother, which

Three Poems by Katja Gorečan, translated from the Slovene by Martha Kosir   Hana hana is a poet. that is to say, she wants to become one. in other words, she’s waiting for others to approve of her. she’s trying to find her voice. well, who isn’t, right? hana sends her poems to all (mainly)

translated from the Finnish by Niina Pollari Sisyphus Nobody had seen Sisyphus since the birth of the universe, when he disappeared with his rock somewhere beyond the clouds. “That’s not how the story went,” my daughter stated. Go to sleep now I said and smoothed her sun-woven hair. I closed the curtains, let the twilight

Translated from the French by Elaine Terranova from The Last Children’s Book (Le dernier livre des enfants) (untitled) I write because I am going to disappear. It was there, My little girl sitting in the stairway, I look at her between the rails Let’s not move I love just to go on It’s important to

/ forecast / errors /   image may contain palm trees sky clouds forecast errors image ocean open eye of a five-category hurricane may be twelve hours of a monstrous burgeoning storm contain winds of a hundred sixty miles an hour image spa glassy hotels tennis courts golf courses pools may be women crying in

Translated from the Ukrainian by Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky   This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

Translated from the Ukrainian by Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky   This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

Translated from the Chinese by Red Pine (Bill Porter)   This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

Translated from the Chinese by Red Pine (Bill Porter)   This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

Translated from the Chinese by Red Pine (Bill Porter) This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

Translated from the Polish by Karen Kovacik   This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

Translated from the Polish by Karen Kovacik   This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

Translated from the Slovene by Ana Jelnikar and Stephen Watts   This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

Translated from the Slovene by Ana Jelnikar and Stephen Watts   This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

Translated from the Slovene by Ana Jelnikar and Stephen Watts   This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

Translated from the Italian by Anna Aresi  Silence Silence will come to me the silence that enters the garments of the dead. The moment was poor (abandoned and wounded) and our skies were foreign. We will flee looking for a Revolution, howled the wind, and our last days screamed, wounded. * Alleyway I A tavern

Translated from the Polish by Jennifer Croft from: MLB, Sofostrofa i inne wiersze, Kraków 2007 MLB, Porumb, Poznań 2013 9 beers for ox-calling The castors on the chair bellow like a wounded bull, weevil. Except the hearing is more sensitive this Tuesday morning excessive as a peeking squirrel. I remember Erzsébet Bridge, women were shaving

Departures from the German by Steven Cramer These “departures” repurpose originals from Rilke’s New Poems (1907/08) both stylistically and thematically, compressing each stanza by a line’s-worth and using, wherever possible, active verbs instead of the adjectives and adverbs so profuse in Englished Rilke. Encounter The avenue’s green shadows clung to him like a dark coat he kept

Translated from the Greek by Maria Nazos Case Study I The light falls lower now— Shadows on the steep mountains The atmosphere calm as meek milk and the griping city flock trudges through nothing.  Between reality and hope where the empty moment was revealed the mind spreads its images. Dividing      distinguishing      varying it struggles to

Translated from the French by Susanne Petermann Child at the Window A child watches out the window for his mother. The hour is endless….never before has he felt such aching in his soul. All these passing strangers, one the same as the next.  It isn’t really their fault if they don’t measure up. His eyes

Translated from the Russian by Kutik and Reginald Gibbons. Prayer (Theme and Variations) If only I knew what new Keats Time has so intently fixed in its gaze, licking its lips with the tongue of its  pendulum. Pendulum—sharp double-edged plait on the peruke of Time. Time!—in the reign of which Frederick or Paul did you

I’m delighted to interview Barbara Siegel Carlson and Ewa Chrusciel in celebration of their recently published new books, What Drifted Here and Yours, Purple Gallinule, respectively. In addition to being two poets I greatly admire, Carlson and Chrusciel are internationally respected translators as well as esteemed editors of Solstice’s Poetry in Translation. DO:  Writing reveals

Translated from the Spanish by Susan Ayres   This piece is part of our Winter 2022 print issue, available for purchase here.    

Translated from the Ukranian by Andrew Sheppard   This piece is part of our Winter 2022 print issue, available for purchase here.

Translated from the Ukrainian by Christine Chraibi   This piece is part of our Winter 2022 print issue, available for purchase here.

Translated from the Ukrainian by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps *** You will never write about how it all really was. You won’t dare, you’ll keep it to yourself, put it aside, keep it in the dark. You’ll talk about literature, when you should talk about life, it’s life that rushes out into the street,

Translated from the Spanish by Ariel Francisco Homeland Homeland from your starved latitude I felt my people rise through sonorous essences and heavy breaths. Homeland I felt how you grip through my blood squeezing my throat bruising my neck screaming along to my song. I witnessed your anguish from afar blooming in treetops erupting from

Translated from the Ukrainian by Bożena Boba-Dyga  and Ewa Chrusciel   The biggest dream: to be with you all at Easter To gather for Easter. This Easter. Greetings, my family; what’s new, Mom? Mom is baking bread as always. My dear ones are all alive. My peace of mind quivers on a line. “My” dear

translated from the Italian by Cristina Viti   Aidoios The word Αἰδοῖος is untranslatable. It is connected to the particular kind of respect due to an unfortunate person who is begging us… It is not to our credit that neither French nor, as far as I know, any other modern language has a word to

translated from the Polish by Maria Jastrzębska   Bug There was only one and he died instantly. Someone had trodden on him on the first step, if you count from the bottom, or on the last if you count from the top. Something poured out of him as he lay there. My daughter asked if

translated from the French by Jerrice J. Baptiste     In the hollow of a dark and quiet mountain, where the wind stops blowing, leaves of the trees are silent birds don’t sing. You don’t even hear the sound of silence. It was midnight, the sky was overcast no moon, no stars a mysterious but

translated from the Portuguese by Alexis Levitin Obstacle Because of poetry beans burn milk spills one forgets to change clothes go inside out the baby cries in hunger one misses the train. But one goes on. Who knows to where, to what anonymous cloud. With the Word, the Poem Don’t put another music to the

translated from the Slovene by the author   from THE DOORS OF NO RETURN (fragments from the epos) Book One: MAPS OF NOSTALGIA Notebook One: THE ADDRESS  Canto Two: THE ANCESTRAL TREE 1 … I was a reflection on the quick mirror of the water, and I was a shadow on the running window of

Translated from the French by Lynn Levin   The Mirabeau Bridge Under the Mirabeau Bridge flows the Seine  And so our loves  Must I recall again How joy always followed pain Come the night come the day The hours pass here I stay Your hands in my hands let’s linger face to face  While underneath

from CHILD translated from the Hebrew by Seth Michelson Stricken A fallen angel always remembers height is depth, the wings – the fear; how his heart exfoliated leaf by leaf till left stark naked. An angel that fell from love to hope flaps its ghost wings in vain; parched and starved, his hands stretched out

translated from Slovenian by Manja Maksimovič   On the Charles Bridge instead of a passion play hordes of tourists with short-term memory loss unknowingly enact the role of refugees. There is no more space for genuine puppeteers. In souvenir shops the Good Soldier Švejk is rarely represented. He has been replaced by Hello Kitty. At

translated from Polish by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese Second bell Hens are for the motherland ducks are against. And the dog is divided. For a moment he turns his bloodshot eyes to the sky. Then his gaze drops to the road again. In dust up to his armpits comes a toothless man who likes to tease. As

translated from Ukrainian by Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky Bridge                                                                        The air is as still and hot as my body. Arched like a bridge over a river. It’s so quiet—the nightingales must be drinking their own black alcohol. No sounds. Only color and shades spread out across the water. Face up—that’s how it was with

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue. Translated from German by the author and Stuart Friebert 

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue. Translated from Polish by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese 

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue. Translated from Polish by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese 

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue. Translated from Vietnamese by Bruce Weigl 

This piece is part of our Fall/Winter 2020 print issue. Translated from Vietnamese by Bruce Weigl 

Translated from Polish by Katarzyna Jakubiak   [a small, local church. we hide there] a small, local church. we hide there from the pouring rain. a few sniffling saints watch us curiously with their eyes weathered by looking into eternity. women nailed for ever to the first rows raise prayers to christ, who quite effectively

Translated from Macedonian by Ljubica Arsovska, and Patricia Marsh Ingrid Jonker writes to Olivera Korveziroska A bullet in the head would do you good, a jump off a bridge or a cut wrist, hydrochloric acid in your tea, your husband’s belt round your neck, at the wrong time, in the wrong place death is an

Translated from the Ukrainian by Olena Jennings   Creaking like hinges and bolts attached to the shutters —  in a section Pärt listened to a bee choir enveloped in a golden translucence in quiet if the bees grew to love Bach if the hive was filled with music he would not have to rely on

translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps, Yale University Press, 2019. Interview conducted by Dzvinia Orlowsky,  July 8, 2019   DO:  Thank you, Virlana, for taking the time to speak with me about your and Wanda Phipp’s process in translating this extraordinary collection.  I’d like to begin by quoting lines from one of Zhadan’s poems

          Mari Epu He drank drops of light from a wooden cup, cold sweat of the resilient, delirious dead. That’s why he dances and lives amid stiff ferns, flinging himself onto the fallow mud. They saw him on the summit, singing demented, trembling and soaking wet, like an old nag. He

Political Poem All the guns are buried in the sky awaiting Autumn’s order to disarm A full barrage lifts up the legendary palace lifts up the joking emperor All the guns are explicating me their injuries also in the silent parts bleeding days, bullets are intelligent All of my selves are pummeling the allies carving

By Osip Emilievich Mandelstam, 1920—translated by Dzvinia Orlowsky     A little sun,HoneyLike the bees of PersephoneNo onecan free a boatunanchored, hear the shadowshod in fur, track down fearthis dense forest.We are left with kisses,Tinglingtiny bees that dieOn leaving their hiveRustlingIn translucent underbrush ofTheir night.Home:Taygetus’ thick wood,Their nourishment isclover    mint   andTimeTake my gifta simple

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue. Translated from German by Stuart Friebert 

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue. Translated from Italian by Richard Jackson 

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue. Translated from Polish by Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese 

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue. Translated from Polish by Karen Kovacik 

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue. From R: exist-stance (2017). Translated from Italian by Anna Aresi. 

translated from the Slovene by Martha Kosir AN UNWRITTEN POEM I dreamt of a poem: beautiful and wholesome. A polished crystal ball. An open cage, filled with the golden, autumn brightness of the Karst. Inside it, emptiness that cradled a music box in its heart. The sound of a dead bird’s flapping wings. And the

translated from the Spanish by Allison A. deFreese Translator’s note: These translated poems are excerpts from Elegía Joseph Cornell/Elegy for Joseph Cornell, an experimental book by María Negroni (Spanish language, Argentina) about Joseph Cornell–as well as about his subjects (including “Godiva” and other actors—among them, children–from his fairytale film Children’s Party). Elegy for Joseph Cornell

translated from Ukrainian by Olena Jennings the poem you wrote with a fox’s claw on the way to Berlin – and about which you were silent and now you say: here it is, catch that’s why I keep this house and its transparent walls where I settled with you in the thistle’s light – and

translated from Polish by Piotr Florczyk I know, simplicity isn’t in demand. Minimalism, yes, but nothing excessive (maybe a spiderweb in the corner of the poem). I don’t care for comparisons. I cross out, proofread, clean up. I leave one loose thread.

translated from Polish by Artur Sebastian Rosman TRIPTYCH     (part I – left panel)   Early morning (not rosy-fingered dawn) they sleep still in the tent. I step out onto a narrow path above a plate-glass lake, take in the scent, wet flesh, of fresh-cut wood; springing on loose boards, I sound out empty knocks

translated from Italian by Gregory M. Pell At times it seems the  product of nothingness  the day spent on trollies or in café showcases. Our cities lack sentinels, rather those who stay awake do so by trade or out of distrust.  And the enemy, no one, has ever seen him coming. Having Lived with Relentless

translated by Ann G. Kilgo from THE SIEGE by Mariadonata Villa Raffaelli Editore, 2012 from Within the City Walls Good Friday in the void I plant tulips and a few sea anemones an absurd spring on this day, and for tomorrow a hole of silence I dreamed of women in labour and a dead friend

Translated from Macedonian by Ljubica Arsovska and Patricia Marsh                                                            You, who were so alive,                        

Translated from French by Richard Jackson #7 The poem says to the blind what the poet does not see #11 Facing the seas A cliff of words Cracks open #35 Forgotten in the dust of ruins the bricks of memory #37 My words are no more than the threads a spider’s that a slight breeze

Translated from the German by Stuart Friebert She climbed into her red canoe without a paddle on a road heavy as lead, without water apples in her pack, absent a future, postcards in gaping shoes, dead holiday greetings yesterday, superseded, freezes, in the faces behind the blinds, the dark’s falling guillotines in the last crack,

Translated from the German by Stuart Friebert Too soon the night’s gobbled up the evening its light smothered wildly propelling winds and dark fingers of clouds to catch the hope of those fleeing on the rotting wood of the footbridge over the gorge

Nothing survived the Annunciation except rocks and the hard shadows of cypresses. Fright in her eyes, she smiles, trapped in the interior of a painting, her hands dirty before she is dragged away in the deathly air. What is beauty if not the roundness of her arms. Or the young Tobias, at war with the

1. Spring is born anew without memory of past lives and the experience of leaves and flowers. A drop of blood spilled on a white carnation petal may appear to signal a trace of Ariel’s random crime, but there are no other clues and no secret police in the flowers. Roots that dig deep into

  The old woman who ate cabbage everyday with roasted bread crumbs, a matron in the backyard —most finicky and industrious— makes bobbin-lace. The one next-door lost her daughter, little Eve, who drowned in the Sava. At night another neighbor chats to her man who is no more, by day she knits mittens for winter.